I’m always amused by the degree to which we humans assume that what has Importance to us personally must carry an equal amount of weight in the general case. As someone who is literally prohibited from occupying space infused with the output of mis-named “air fresheners” by my bodies histamine response, I can assure you that not all objections were purely based on cognitive intrusion. There are a lot of asthma sufferers out there! Scenting any public place is a Bad Thing – I personally have trouble with sitting next to someone on a bus who’s clothing reeks of scented dryer sheets, even. Please don’t belittle what is a problematic aspect of shared spaces for many people (more than you would think, since any attempt to explain the situation often prove to be extremely unrewarding, so I, and probably others, no longer bother).

That said, thanks for a very interesting read!

Covering up the smell of gangrene is not a good idea.

Any artificial odours should ADD valuable information, not remove it.

For example, adding odour to flammable but odourless gas.

The best thing advertisers could do for bus shelters would be to CLEAN them up so that people didn’t associate their products with unhygenic public urinals.

If all shelters that advertised a cleaning product were cleaned, whereas all those that didn’t smelt like cat’s piss, well, that might work – until the advertisers deliberately started encouraging cats to piss at other shelters…